Hermann Hofmeister

Hermann Louis Karl Hofmeister (born May 17, 1878 in Hanover , † July 26, 1936 in Braunschweig ) was an anti-Semitic German teacher, historian and archaeologist .

Life

Hofmeister came from a Hanover merchant family. He studied philology in Marburg and received his doctorate in 1904. From 1905 he initially worked as a teacher in Wesermünde until in 1908 he went to the Johanneum in Lübeck as a senior teacher . He was wounded in the First World War and returned to the Lübeck school service in 1916.

Racist teacher

Around 1920 he became conspicuous as a teacher because of racist anti-Semitic remarks. Hofmeister was an avowed member of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund . He indoctrinated the students inside the school and outside it in right-wing youth associations. He fell out with the headmaster Hermann Stodte . The parents of the Jewish students he had discriminated against filed complaints with the chairman of the high school authority, Senator Kulenkamp . Disciplinary proceedings initiated by the Senate of the Free Hanseatic City of Lübeck in 1921 only resulted in further disciplinary punishments in 1923 in his resignation from the state school service in Lübeck due to incapacity for work. Hofmeister initially retired to his hometown Hanover, where he did prehistoric and early historical studies. In Hanover he wrote the book Vom Hansegeist zum Händlergeist , an anti-Semitic story of the Jews in Lübeck.

Archaeological activity

The Kaaksburg

During his time in Lübeck he researched old fortifications in Lübeck and Schleswig-Holstein and carried out numerous excavations in this context. From the end of the 1920s to the beginning of the 1930s he stayed in the Steinburg district in the vicinity of Itzehoe and continued his research there. In 1932 he presented his excavation report on the Kaaksburg in the Steinburg district under the title Urholstein .

Professor and regional archaeologist in Braunschweig

At the instigation of his party friend Dietrich Klagges , co-founder of the NSDAP in the Steinburg district and promoted to Braunschweig Minister of the Interior and Public Education in 1931 and Prime Minister on May 6, 1933, Hofmeister was appointed in autumn 1932 - despite considerable opposition from the cultural studies department of the Technical University in Braunschweig - appointed associate professor for German prehistory and early history as well as for " German studies ". He was supposed to create an institute for German prehistory and early history and set up a museum for this epoch of German history in Braunschweig, which was ideologically important to the National Socialists, the so-called “House of Prehistory”. In addition, Hofmeister was appointed state archaeologist for the Free State of Braunschweig . Hofmeister's endeavor was an ideologically disguised popular education in the sense of National Socialism, with permanent emphasis on the “unequaled and unsurpassed cultural achievement of the Germanic peoples”.

Hofmeister's specialty was the exploration of castles and fortifications. In the Free State of Braunschweig he was busy reconstructing the Lübbensteine near Helmstedt and researching the Tetzelstein in Elm and the Asseburg . In the Deister he carried out excavations at the Heisterburg .

Opening of the crypt of Henry the Lion in the Brunswick Cathedral

Tomb of Henry the Lion and his wife Mathilde

Henry the Lion's crypt in Brunswick Cathedral

In the early summer of 1935, the National Socialist regime planned to open the burial place of Henry the Lion in Braunschweig Cathedral , which it did. After initial difficulties, Hofmeister took over the project management. The grave was opened at the end of June, in camera, in the presence of the newly appointed NSDAP Prime Minister Klagges and other NSDAP greats such as Heinrich Himmler and Alfred Rosenberg .

The excavation work was completed after just a few days. Shortly before his death, Hofmeister prepared an official excavation report that comprised eleven pages of text with 56 photos, but was not published because of the content that was ideologically unwelcome to the National Socialists. A slightly abridged version was not published until 1978.

On the basis of the findings, Hofmeister assumed that Heinrich was a cripple . That was embarrassing for Himmler and Rosenberg. The interest of the National Socialists in a propaganda exploitation of the excavation results immediately died out. The idea of ​​the results of the opening of the crypt lasted until 1974. Today experts assume that the corpse identified by Hofmeister as Heinrich the Lion was mistaken for his wife Mathilde .

Hofmeister's last work is the Germanic studies published in 1936 . He died in 1936 after an operation.

Appreciation of the Hofmeister after 1945

Until 2006, Hofmeister in Itzehoe was honored by having a street named after him. Only after several critical newspaper articles about Hermann Hofmeister had appeared, mostly from the hand of the Itzehoe photographer and journalist Michael Ruff, did the tide turn. In 2006 the city decided to rename Hermann-Hofmeister-Strasse to Dietrich-Bonhoeffer-Strasse.

Works

• The fortifications of northern Albania. Compilation and investigation of the prehistoric and historical castles and fortifications: Booklet 1 - Lübeck; Booklet 2- Office of the Principality of Ratzeburg . Lübeck 1917
• From the Hanseatic spirit to the merchant spirit . Th. Weicher, Leipzig 1925
• Limes Saxoniae . In the journal of the Society for Schleswig-Holstein History, Volume 27 1927. pp. 67 to 169
• The chats: Volume 1 Mattium: The Altenburg near Niedenstein . J. Baer & Co., Frankfurt a. M. 1930
• The prehistoric monuments in the Lübeck state territory. Lübeck 1930.
• Urholstein. Edited by the district committee d. Steinberg district, book decoration by Paul Holtorf, JJ Augustin , Glückstadt 1932. Overall title: Altsachsenforschung; Vol. 1
• German studies and national education. Edited by the National Socialist. Teachers 'Association, Gau Südhannover-Braunschweig, Appelhans, Braunschweig 1934. Series of publications by the National Socialist Teachers' Association, Gau Südhannover-Braunschweig.
• Germanic Studies . Diesterweg publishing house, Frankfurt a. M. 1936
• Report on the discovery of Henry the Lion's crypt in Braunschweig Cathedral in the summer of 1935 . Abridged version. Archiv-Verlag, Braunschweig 1978.

literature

• Manfred glasses , Doris Mührenberg: Lübeck citizens and archeology. Lübeck 2008, pp. 40-41. ISBN 978-3-7950-1290-8
• Horst-Rüdiger Jarck, Günter Scheel (Ed.): Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon. 19th and 20th centuries. Hahn, Hannover 1996, ISBN 3-7752-5838-8 .
• Richard Schult: Tolerance - patriotic sentiments - Germanness - anti-Semitism, political values ​​education at the Johanneum during the Weimar Republic. In: Johanneum zu Lübeck 1872-1997 , Lübeck 1997, p. 221 ff. (P. 251–259 The case of Prof. Dr. Hermann Hofmeister )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Uwe Lammers: Seven Lives: Scientists' biographies at the cultural studies department of the Technical University of Braunschweig under National Socialism . Digital library of the TU Braunschweig, Braunschweig 2015, ( digitized ), [PDF], accessed February 28, 2020
2. ^ ^{A b} Horst-Rüdiger Jarck, Günter Scheel (Ed.): Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon. 19th and 20th centuries , Hannover 1996, p. 283.
3. ↑ Minutes of the meeting of the School and Culture Committee of the City Council of Itzehoe with the recommendation to the city to rename Hermann-Hofmeister-Strasse. Archive link ( Memento of the original from December 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 

Web link

• Michael Ruff: Hermann Hofmeister - The man who made Steinburg Heldengau.